


Far From the Heart

by Panny



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Backstory, Gen, Yuletide 2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-20 19:01:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17028234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panny/pseuds/Panny
Summary: Minerva was branded a coward before she ever earned the name "hero". In some ways, that never changed.





	Far From the Heart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Eccentric_Hat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eccentric_Hat/gifts).



When Minerva was a girl, Miralaviniax Orbital Body 5 was beautiful. At the time, she didn’t appreciate it the way that regret and loss would later convince her that she should have. People so rarely appreciate the things that surround them, the things so omnipresent as to be invisible, like time or happiness or air, until they suddenly become notable in their absence. Children, especially, are not prone to ruminating on the fragility of life or the simple wonder of how _full_ the world is. That didn’t make the regret any less bitter.

Minerva was allowed to be like other children for only a short time. She was barely eight phases old when she saw the first of them. She would often wonder later if that was the true beginning of the invasion or if they had been around for much, much longer – lying in wait.

A carapace glinted in the dark, skittering by on too many legs and young Minerva screamed. The thing fled into yawning dark outside the pavilion, but Minerva kept screaming until her throat was tingling and raw and the other children were awake and whispering. In her horrified child-mind, there must have been hundreds of them waiting just outside of her night-dimmed vision, biding their time until everyone else went back to sleep and she was alone again.

One of the Mothers swept her up, long fingers sweeping over her face, comforting and assessing at once. It was not _her_ Mother that held her and though she knew that she was old enough that she should have let go of such attachments, she could not help finding this woman wholly inadequate. Still, when she hushed her and asked her what had happened, Minerva babbled her terror without hesitation. Even in her distress, she could see the disbelief bleed into the Mother’s face, wearing the mask of polite interest. It was an expression that would live in the back of her mind for a long time.

 

Minerva hurled the stick into the air and watched it catch on the branches of the overarching trees before falling back down. Beyond them, the glinting light of the World Barrier blanketed the sky overhead. Minerva hefted another stick, watching it spin and fancying that one day she might launch it far enough to rip a hole through the sky.

There was a crackling crunch of ground behind her and she tensed, heart hammering. She took up another stick, its rough edges digging into the palm of her hands as she clenched it tight in front of her. It wasn’t sturdy enough to be a real weapon – even her childish flights of fancy didn’t delude her that much. But it might just be enough to buy her time to run.

Her mind tricked her for a terrifying moment in which she was sure that she saw dark, opalescent eyes emerge from the forest. But before she could do more than pull back her stick for a swing, reality took hold and shattered the illusion with a chorus of boisterous laughter. It was almost worse.

There was a span of heartbeats where she considered fleeing before the other children saw her, still tromping noisily and carelessly through the woods as they were. Instead, she lowered her stick to lean on and waited for them to pass.

It almost seemed that they wouldn’t notice her when the one in front jerked to a sudden stop, almost knocking one of her friends over with the force of a jostling arm. “Hello, Minerva. Seen any monsters lately?” And then she laughed like she’d told the funniest joke in the world.

Minerva stood and endured.

 

“Honestly, Minerva.” Thalia tutted at the state of her soiled clothing and Minerva immediately felt bad for disappointing her, even if she already knew that she’d do the same again tomorrow. Thalia was the only tutor who had yet to walk out on Minerva and as much as she considered studies an obvious waste of time, something small and lonely in Minerva _loved_ her for it. “You are…so clever, you have so much potential. And you waste it all brawling in the street.”

“I do not brawl,” Minerva said, sitting down and feeling where the street dust was already caking to the crown of her head. She had long since given up on trying to explain herself. Thalia was kind and honest and her bombastic cheer could not hide her gentleness, but even she would not believe in the alien creatures that stalked the forest. If no one else would prepare for what she knew was coming, Minerva would just have to be prepared for them. “I duel. There are rules to it.”

“And you follow these rules?”

“Yes,” Minerva said, voice a snap of habitual anger. But Thalia did not look disbelieving – not in this. Rather she looked thoughtful.

“And if someone were to instruct you in this art – in these duels – you would listen to them?”

“Yes,” Minerva said again – just as insistent, but with something like hope lighting in her chest.

“I see,” Thalia said. She studied Minerva’s face as if it was a book that she could read.

 

Helen was not as kind as Thalia, but she was strong and brave and experienced. A jagged run of knotted flesh marked the left side of her face; Minerva imagined some of the crueler children would have called her ‘ugly’ and didn’t want to admit that she had thought the same.

But Helen never held back and Minerva loved her almost as much for that as she loved Thalia for everything else. Lesson after lesson, practise after practise, she’d push against her defenses and punish her for any missteps with brutal efficiency and a cold dispassion that felt almost like respect. Lesson after lesson, practise after practise, Minerva came back for more and tried unsuccessfully to shore herself against the onslaught. She was meticulous in her studies and Thalia had never been happier; Minerva didn’t dare risk losing her dueling lessons.

Then, one day, Minerva knocked Helen flat. She stumbled clumsily at the unexpected lack of follow up and then stood, mouth agape, watching her teacher blink dazedly in the dirt. She had never had the upper hand before.

She was unprepared for Helen to sweep her feet out from under her, following up with the flat of her blade pressed bruising hard to Minerva’s neck. “Never give an enemy any quarter,” she said. “When they’re down, you press your advantage unless you like the taste of dust.” The words were harsh, but Minerva imagined there might have been something like pride in her voice.

She whispered the advice into the warmth of her bedding each night, like a prayer. She never allowed herself to forget it.

 

Minerva tripped over a root, the ground jarring her forearms hard enough to make her teeth rattle. She lay there, curled and panting for a moment – sick without being ill and not sure what to do about it. There were noises behind her. _Crinch cronch_. And then a heavy _thud_ as another tree fell. There were no screams anymore and the strange sickness burned cold fire under her skin as she tried not to think about what that might have meant.

 _Crinch cronch_. _Thud_.

And then the sound of hurried footsteps behind her. She struggled to find her feet, but she was too slow and the despair of it made her slower still. They would be on her in a moment and she would no more stand up to them than the ancient trees, which even now she heard smacking into the forest loam. What was the point of trying then? If there was no one still crying out for rescue? If there was no one left to save? Better to be part of the silence than to be the only one left screaming into the emptiness of a dying planet.

Then a hand gripped her elbow and yanked her upward almost too fast to catch her balance. “Come on,” Helen said, voice a low, sore whisper. “You do not get to lie down and die just yet.”

Overhead, the shimmering sky was fading –

The details of Minerva’s sleeping quarters ebbed into further clarity with each gasped breath. She had never been so grateful to be the misfit who wouldn’t sleep under the stars, with the familiar, closed surroundings being the only things keeping her grounded. She had never been so glad of her own isolation. She shook through the reformation of her composure and eventually the fear-spiked energy fled, leaving her limbs heavy and aching with the lack of rest. She did not sleep again that night.

In the morning, she asked Thalia if she might procure something to write in. Thalia was delighted and even Minerva’s evasiveness surrounding the purpose of her writing did not dampen her mood.

Minerva’s records of her dreams were the most careful, detailed notes that she would ever take in her life.

 

In another world, one where Minerva was the hero she had spent most of her life pretending to be, she would have fought harder to ensure that her people were warned. In this world, in the one that mattered, Minerva did not have the strength to champion that kind of fight. Confidence and compassion were dull blades, worn down by insults and doubt and sheer loneliness. So when the truth came out, heralded by violence and loss and terror, she was not as sorry as she knew that she should have been for her part in it. And she never forgave herself for that.

Truth be told, there probably had been no foreseeing the precise moment that everything came crashing down. Minerva’s dreams had never been so helpfully specific as to allude to the relationship between recognizable constellations and the horizon line or how sharply defined the outline of Orbital Body 4 was during the day. There were no portentous storms, no alarm bells literal or figurative that could have prepared them for what was coming.

The Illuminant was a marvel, even for a people who had become used to the mundanity of marvels. There had been a lot of talk of ‘boldly walking forward’ and ‘breaking down barriers’ – the usual patter. But Minerva was still at the edge of the crowd, straining to hear more of the official party line at the unveiling. “We have allowed our fear to cage us,” the presenter was saying. Minerva didn’t know if she was the inventor or if she just had the charisma to justify soaking up the credit. “But now, we need not be alone and we will not have to leave ourselves defenseless to prove it. There is nothing to fear.”

In the sky, the World Barrier shone merrily and the Illuminant stretched toward it like hope and it _sang_ like music. Somewhere in the distance, there was a sound that only Minerva would recognize. _Crinch cronch_. _Thud_.

For all her studies and her patience, even Thalia could not have crafted a moment of more perfect irony if she had tried.

 

The people of Miralaviniax Orbital Body 5 had worked hard for their piece of sky. They had scurried and scavenged until they learned to build and bulwark and then they had pushed ever onwards, determined not to lose their hard-won freedom ever again. But they also had a long memory and knew how to handle crisis like instinct. Literally and figuratively, they went to ground.

It wouldn’t be a permanent solution without a winning attack strategy; the creatures’ strong mandibles were alarmingly efficient for digging and tunneling. But it was a reprieve – at least, for those who had made it. Minerva had sobbed like a child when Helen refused to answer her questions about Thalia.

Helen had never had much patience for tears. When Minerva refused to cease crying on her own, Helen stalked toward her and turned her by a harsh grip on her shoulder, angry and rough. For a moment, Minerva thought that she would strike her. She didn’t. “You’re still alive,” Helen said, spitting it like an accusation.

“What does that matter?” Minerva asked, wrapping her arms around herself as Helen snatched her hand away, as if she couldn’t bear to touch her anymore. And then, pleading: “It should not have been me.”

“But it is,” Helen said, “and that means you’re not done.”

Helen left her to herself for a few days after that. She tried to take the words to heart, even when news about the status of the surface world was less than encouraging. The creatures had disabled the World Barrier in short order, swarming the most heavily guarded point of their civilization and tearing past their defences. It wasn’t that their efforts didn’t harm the creatures – by all accounts, there had been considerable loss of life on both sides. It was that the creatures didn’t seem to _care_. They didn’t mourn the way that people did. They didn’t tire. They didn’t get discouraged or deem a task to be impossible. They just kept coming and for every one that was cut down, an endless number seemed to be waiting to join the fray. It felt hopeless.

But for as overwhelming as the enemy was, some of them were still alive. Minerva was still alive. They weren’t done.

The larger concern was why they had done what they had done. Did they just pursue the most obvious target, driven by blind animal instinct? Did they know what it meant – know that there was a countdown ticking on the whole planet without a barrier to protect them from the danger of their own gravitational pull amongst a body of orbiting space debris? Did they come from the stars themselves, these unnatural, unstoppable foes? Were they opening the way for more of their kind?

When Helen returned, it was with a woman that Minerva didn’t recognize. “Hello, Minerva,” the woman said, tone oddly removed. She was neither as hard as Helen nor as kind as Thalia, but trying for some strange middle ground between the two. It wasn’t working. “We have been waiting for you.”

The part of Minerva that had never really stopped being angry, not since that first disbelieving look on a Mother’s face when confronted with the fears of a child, felt like snapping. She had been _grieving_ – was she not even allowed that? But the answer was too obvious for the question to deserve a voice: of course she wasn’t. She wasn’t done. So, instead she stood, only sniffing lightly and leaving her hands loose and unclenched at her sides. “I’m ready.”

Helen eyed her narrowly. “You’ve misunderstood. But if it gets you to stop feeling sorry for yourself, then so be it.” She reached over her shoulder, drawing a sword that shone like starlight. She held it in front of her as she walked forward, leaving it open for Minerva’s unsubtle examination. “We saved you for a reason.”

 

“Hold your position until I give the signal,” Minerva said. Helen inclined her head and didn’t openly challenge the order, which was still a novel experience. The Order was not home and they were not family – they were not even friends for the most part. But where Minerva had once been alone, they were an army and they were prepared to follow her against a threat that no one had believed in. For as long as she remained standing, that would have to be enough.

They had become more efficient at running raids, for all the good it did them. Their intel had improved, but that didn’t necessarily herald hope for their cause. The most useful piece of information that they had obtained was the realization that the creatures employed some manner of hivemind; whatever one knew, the other creatures knew almost instantaneously. They could change tactics on a dime, call for back-up without a word and far beyond their immediate proximity. She was certain that there must have been some way to exploit it – any strength could be a weakness in equal parts – but for now what it meant was that the unpredictable, dangerous tactics that their battle plans had hinged on were useless.

But Minerva was also learning a lot about herself and what she was capable of. She was capable of a lot, as it turned out. More than she had imagined. So, with her blade singing in her hand, flaring to life before cutting down an unsuspecting opponent, slicing through hard carapace like butter. How long did the brain continue to send signals before death took hold? How long did the hivemind need to receive those signals? Maybe if she was just fast enough. Maybe if she was just good enough.

Minerva gave a long low whistle and was answered by its match. She knew that if she paused to look, she would see her people swarming over the hills, prepared to die on her order. They would take the enemy apart, piece by piece. They would drive them back. They were not done.

Minerva was ruthless in her pursuit. The creatures may have taken the forest, but there were still places that they could hide and she was determined to flush them out. While she largely worked alone once the enemy was engaged, it was inevitable that she would run across some of their number as she searched. Some of them would be holding their own and, if circumstances allowed, would acknowledge her with a nod. Some of them wouldn’t be quite so well off. She rarely had time to spare for any of them.

She stopped at the front of a cave after noticing fresh divots in the ground at the entrance. She heard a voice, warped from the echoing of the walls, and nearly left without checking farther. If someone was in there and well enough to talk, the situation was probably well in hand. Then she heard the scuttling sound of too many legs and a metallic clang.

Minerva rushed into the cave to see a new recruit – the one they’d rescued half a cycle ago during a raid that had cost them a whole squadron – with her weapon on the ground, standing calmly in front of a monster. Minerva was quick, but not so much that she could take the creature down unnoticed. It had just enough time to rear back defensively before her sword found its belly. How long did the brain continue to send signals before death took hold? How long did the hivemind need to receive those signals? The plan was compromised; they would lose more people.

Fury rushed though her head, dizzying in its intensity. She fisted the front of the girl’s tunic and shook her, wanting to rattle her as much as she was rattled. “They are the enemy. If you do not strike them down, you risk the lives of everyone on this planet. _Never_ give them quarter.”

To Minerva’s surprise, the girl’s face hardened and she glared at her. “It wasn’t fighting back.”

 

Finding the archway was an accident. Maybe. She still questioned the convenience of it, the coincidence of stumbling across a landmark that she had never seen before during a retreat that was too desperate to be strategic and running through it when she could have just gone _around_. She did not doubt the existence of destiny, she only questioned how directly its hand had guided her towards the end. It would have been too comforting to believe that things had played out the way that they were meant to.

The world on the other side was beautiful in a way that Miralaviniax Orbital Body 5 had not been for a long time. To some extent, it was beautiful in ways that Oribital Body 5 had never been; delicate structures built of long, gossamer strands shone in the light. There was no barrier in this sky, it faced the sun with unreserved acceptance. To Minerva, it was the most glorious thing she had ever seen. Her heart broke for how impossible its existence was.

She was set upon within moments of crossing over. The only warning that she had was the droning buzz of hurried wings. Up in the sky, colours swirled – beautiful and dangerous – and as they neared she saw the shape of her attackers. Wings adorned by glaring eyes, bodies painted in warning stripes. They descended upon her without apparent need to slow for landing and she barely had enough time to draw her sword. Even as she did it, she knew it wouldn’t be enough; she was outnumbered by these creatures and without hope of back-up. She would not win. But she was still alive, which meant that she wasn’t done yet.

The alien beings stood and regarded her for a moment. It was the most disconcerting stare that she had ever received in her life; she couldn’t decipher their thoughts, had no frame of reference to understand their expressions. And then one of them did the unthinkable. In a strange, buzzing voice that she impossibly understood, it said: “Hello, Minerva. We have been waiting for you.”

Minerva stood, frightened beyond reason, and endured.

 

The council room was not a comfortable space for Minerva. The people who most often populated it valued thought over action and Minerva had neither the time nor the talent for the former and she knew it. Thalia had called her clever once, but Thalia would not be proud of her now. She was beyond philosophy, unsuited for puzzles. When she closed her eyes, she saw the arc of the next sword stroke and didn’t know how to reason farther than that.

The people in the room knew this about her, as well. They were not glad to have her there. They would not have invited her if she was not the only one with the knowledge they needed. She would not have given it to them if they were not the only ones who would understand what to do with it. They needed each other and that was all the worse for both of them.

Helen stood behind her, just far enough to the side to be visible over her right shoulder. It was a quiet gesture of deference and support. Minerva would never have been able to put into words how much she appreciated it. She closed her eyes and let the talk wash over her until her opinion was called for.

“I think it’s possible that the creatures come through these portals. It would explain why we have never been able to locate a nest or find a point of arrival,” one councillor said.

“I agree,” said Minerva.

“Then if we remove the threat of these portals, we might stand a chance of winning the battle. They would no longer be able to rely on reinforcements; we could drive them out at our leisure,” said another councillor.

“I agree.”

A third councillor shifted from her seat at the edge of the room. The expression on her face was that of a Mother, coaxing a squalling child to give up her belief in impossible monsters in the dark. “Surely you all see the danger of what you’re suggesting. It would be an attack on this other world. It could mean war.”

“I agree.” Minerva opened her eyes, but left her thoughts shuttered. “But we cannot afford not to do it.”

“We cannot afford to fight a war on two sides. We would not win.”

“We cannot afford to leave an enemy at our backs while we welcome a new one from the front. If we know the source of the threat, we must eliminate it.”

“This is mad. You would leave us without hope of survival.”

“If we do not do this, then there already isn’t any.” Minerva’s hand struck the table hard, drumming silence into the rest of the room. She could feel the disdainful stare of the councillor and the way it infected her fellows. She knew that in some way, she had already lost from the moment she let them glimpse the rage that trembled through her muscles – the rage that never left her, but that she tried so, so hard to channel for a higher purpose. She didn’t care. “If we do not do everything within our power to strike the enemy down, then we have stopped trying and we cannot claim to hope for anything. We cannot afford not to do this. I will not allow it. We are not _done_.”

The councillor stood, unfolding her body in a show of slow, calm grace. A deliberate contrast to Minerva’s tense posture. “You do not have the authority to start a war.”

Helen stepped forward, startling the room with the abrupt reminder of her presence. “Your War Councillor’s been dead for three phases now, Aemilia. Maybe it’s time that you let someone qualified take the position.” She inclined her head toward Minerva, considering. The knotted scar on her face seemed underscored by the shadows. “You are certain that these people cannot be allies?”

Minerva thought of glaring wings and impossible words and gleaming carapaces in the dark and fragmented, unreadable eyes that were so far from anything that she had ever considered to be a face. “Yes,” she said, chest constricting around the lie. She was not certain of anything. She could not afford to be wrong.

Helen nodded once. “Then we will follow you. Wherever you lead us.”

 

Desperation was a strong motivator. Push a person far enough and genius or madness had an equal chance of springing from that well. Even at that time, Minerva had probably known which side of that line the disease fell on. She was beyond caring. They had lost so much and there was so little left to save. They were losing inexorably and she felt the weight of the mistake that had led them there on her shoulders and knew that all the others could see it too, even if they didn’t dare voice it. She couldn’t keep going anymore, but she was alive so she could not be done and so she would take another step just so the weight could drive her further into the ground. It was a vicious cycle and there was no way to break out of it except to win or to die and only one of those could be a conscious option.

So when the idea came to her in a dream, she didn’t know if it was prophecy or delirium, but she clung to it either way. She was used to finding answers in the dark and it was such a stark relief to have a direction to go in. They would use the hivemind against them. Destroy them from the inside out. The Miralavinians, who were always alone with their thoughts, would have nothing to fear. Anything that relied on the communal telepathy of the creatures or...or the other insectoid inhabitants of the other world would be destroyed. When she brought it before the councillors, there was a show of resistance, some deeply conditioned need insisting that there needed to be one. But they were tired too, she could see it.

So, when Aemilia, who had argued so fiercely with her countless times before, raised her voice quite reasonably to point out: “You realize, this will mean the death of that entire world?”

Minerva just said: “Yes.”

“As you say, War Councillor.”

And that was it, all the consideration that the loss of all life on another planet warranted. It was the easiest decision in the whole pointless war.

 

“You will not come with us?” Helen asked. She looked for a moment like she would lay a hand on Minerva’s shoulder and then didn’t.

“No.”

“We do not have the World Barrier. This planet will not survive.”

“I know that.” Minerva tried for a smile and could tell that she did not succeed. “You propose to fly through the very asteroids that threaten it. You will probably not survive either.”

“That is likely, but we will still try. We are not done.”

“I am.”

Helen stared at her for a moment, considering. And then she nodded once and did not try to persuade her anymore. That somehow stung the most, even if Minerva knew that she wasn’t entitled to feel hurt. None of their hands were clean, but only one of them had proposed the idea that won the war. Only one of them had carried the payload past the barrier and secreted it until it was too late to do anything. Only one of them had stood and borne witness as a planet died. That they had even offered to take her with them was more generosity than she deserved.

She stood and watched the strange ships that the last of the Miralavinians had built fly off into the unprotected sky. As the shape of them disappeared beyond her sight, she had to suck in great gulping breaths through the band of steel that her sudden loneliness had forged around her chest. The air tasted like dust.

 

Duck Newton was a strange being with a strange name and stranger priorities, Minerva had decided. She had observed him for some time while she slumbered next to the Illuminant and it sang her his story. Duck Newton was just like her and he would need guidance in the pursuit of his destiny. Duck Newton would clash against unbeatable foes and impossible odds and Minerva could be there to ensure that his burden was not so heavy as to stamp out his spirit.

Duck Newton was also nothing like her and this was a balm on her own soul.

Minerva had to work hard to reach him. The Illuminant was still a marvel and had allowed her to project her consciousness beyond the reaches of any world familiar to her. It was far more than she had ever imagined and was not enough. Slowly, meticulously, she siphoned off her own powers so that one day she and Duck Newton might communicate and neither of them would need be alone. It was much like her first sword practices and, as she always had, she again and again got up to keep trying. She gifted him the best and the worst of her abilities; she sacrificed her dreams.

When her hard work paid off and she crossed another impossible finish line, she found herself not quite knowing what to say. She did not want to be War Councillor Minerva, here at their first meeting. She did not want to poison this new relationship and the bright, hopeful future that she and Duck Newton would craft for his planet by bringing with her all that she had been and done. As she watched Duck Newton snap into wakefulness, she reached through her past for the voice of a hero. It was not Helen’s cold self-assurance or Aemilia’s rational intonations that came to her. “I apologize for the rude awakening, Duck Newton. If you must take a moment to collect yourself before speaking, I completely understand.”

The bombast that carried Minerva’s words did not belong to her, but it was intimately familiar nonetheless. If Duck Newton was to stand a chance, if he was to do what she could not, if he was to fight and win, he would need a mentor. As Minerva looked upon his young face, foreign in its features but familiar in its fear, she thought that Thalia’s kindness was not such a bad fit for the job.

She extended her hand and waited for a second chance.


End file.
